We love Positano

Scott writes:
Day 45

A leisurely start to the day. We seem to have a few of those. Theresa booked into an Italian cooking school at the best restaurant in Montepretuso, about 500m from where we are staying and she was booked to start at 3pm, so we had to be sure to back here by about 2.30.

We opted for the beach. Tough choice. While it is a stone beach and the stones get so hot you burn your feet walking 3 metres to the water, the stones are not big and are comfortable enough to lie on. Once again, we were not prepared to pay 8 euro per lounger so the stones it was. But the savings are eaten up by coffee for Scott and Theresa and icecream for Holly, James and Emma. Plus the parking fee. And the park is a long way up the cliffs from the water. Theresa counted 450 steps up from the beach to the car and it is all up narrow alleys with no breeze. With the temperature in the low-mid 30's and high humidity, by the time you get back to the car you need another swim.

Back to the house to feast on savoury buns made by our lovely hosts downstairs, then some time doing washing and lazing around - we needed a rest after a tough morning swimming, lying on the beach and drinking coffee. Theresa went off to her cooking school - which she said was fantastic, so those of you back in Christchurch can expect some pretty good Italian fare next time we see you. After a walk to the local store (which involves saying ciao to just about every person in the village along the way), I took the children to a resturant down the hill a bit for pizza. They made all sorts of bargains to get icecream afterwards - yes, twice in a day.

A few weeks ago I commented that French are crazy, driving their pugeots citroens and renaults around the skinny winding streets of the Dordogne at breakneck speed. Well, here on the Amalfi coast (and in Italy generally) it is different. They are more forgiving than I remember. And while it is easier to fit a camel through the eye of a needle than pass two ways on most of the streets around here, it is done anyway, with a combination of reversing, inching around, ducking into gaps that aren't really there and passing within a coat of paint of the drivers going the other way. On the odd bend they have a person with a baton, stopping you so a bus can come round the bend from the other direction. It is madness.

There are rules I am sure but nobody obeys them. Speed limits? No. Parking on the side of a super skinny winding road with a cliff on one side and a huge drop on the other while still going in both directions and squeezing past? No problem. And for good measure they park underneath a no parking sign whenever they can find one. And yet, there are very few horns or angry words, although some man yelled at me in Italian today for parking half on a fotpath and half on a skinny winding road. I think it must have been the French numberplate that upset him.